"I could put my teeth on your throat. I could growl. I could eat you whole."
There was a time where she would have rushed to greet Raymond the moment she heard he came to see her. It was a time when sorrow and not magic ran electric through her blood. A time when her eyes had been the eyes of a wild thing fearing the cage, or the lash, or the feel of teeth wrapped hard around her spine.
But that Isra, the one with her soft eyes and her soft heart, is buried beneath the crown of teeth she'll forever wear around her neck.
She is almost dead.
So she simply smiles when one of the guards tells her He is here. It's a smile full of sharp edges that still ache metallic and bloody. When she pauses at the window, to see her dragon swooping low over the waves and drawing out words in the brine with the tip of his tail, the look does not soften on her face. If this a story, if any of this is a story anymore, she's already decided that she will never be the maiden again. Isra only wants to be the dragon in the mountain, the hero with his chest full of noble glory, or the shadows running fast and slick through the sunflowers. She only wants to be everything.
The hallway shines with moonstone, quartz and lapis lazuli. Each step she takes sounds like a song she sung once in a dream-- the sharp clash of stone against bone, the sigh of magic pouring out from her like blood, the whisper of wondering shadows when they found no darkness and only brightness. It reminds her of Eik.
And even that isn't enough to soften the look upon her face, because---
There he is, blood-red glory that belongs to some age long gone. She can see the way his tail rests against the floor like a waiting beast. The sight of it makes her shiver with something more dangerous than fear. Beneath her skin her magic roars, and out at sea her dragon hums, and the moon blazes white-cold in her breast. Her throat aches like she's swallowed a fiery, rusted sword. She can taste metal, even now it's always metal and dust.
Isra steps closer and all the things alive and hot beneath her skin do not settle. They do not settle at all. “Was it worth it?” She wants to turn the walls to bone around him, like a teeth falling down over a mountain cave. When she blinks can still feel the drop, drop, drop of Acton's blood falling on her face. It all flashes electric through her blood that once sang only of sorrow and running fleet-footed through the hills.
She steps closer again and the ground beneath her hooves trembles like it's both afraid of what it might become and eager to be anything but worn gray stone. “Was leaving worth it?” She can see the darkness of his gaze when she stops, and she wonders if he can feel the fire of her breath curling hungry in the space between them. Her eyes flash like the storm sea and her dragon's humming becomes loud enough that she can hear it trickling in through the window like icy rain.
And when she lifts her head, so that he might see the ring of white curled around the delicate hollow of her throat, the stone beneath their hooves turns to rubies.
Blood-red, always blood-red.
@Raymond
